FRIENDSHIP- THE PUREST FORM OF LOVE

Friendship- The Purest Form of Love

By Paramahansa Yogananda 

           Friendship is the purest form of God’s love because it is born of the heart’s free choice and is not imposed upon us by familial instinct. Ideal friends never part; nothing can sever their fraternal relationship. I have never lost a true friend. Even though two to whom I gave sincere love became inimical, I am still a friend to them. To be a true, unconditional friend, your love must be anchored in God’s love. Your life with God is the inspiration behind true divine friendship with all. True friends bring mutual progress to one another.             The guru-disciple relationship is the highest expression of friendship, for it is based on unconditional divine love and wisdom. It is the loftiest and most sacred of all relationships. Christ and his disciples were all one in spirit, as are my Master [Swami Sri Yukteswar] and I and those who are in tune with me, because of the common bond of God’s divine love. Drinking His love together from the chalice of sincere hearts is the unifying sacrament of this relationship.            

 In human friendship familiarity should be avoided, or after a little while friends may take advantage of each other. But in divine friendship there is ever-increasing respect; each one thinks only of the highest welfare of each other. That is the nature of the divine friendship between guru and disciple. One who partakes of this relationship is on the way to wisdom and freedom.          
 Whenever I speak to others, as in these services, one form appears before me: my Guru. His influence is paramount in my life. Even now, though he is no longer on this earth plane, he is always with me. 

Friendship is not something of the marketplace. Friendship is one of those rare things which belong to the temple and not to the shop. But you are not aware of that kind of friendship, you will have to learn it.Friendship is a great art. Love has a natural instinct behind it; friendship has no natural instinct behind it. Friendship is something conscious; love is unconscious.

A friendship is possible only between two empty boats. Then you are open to the other, inviting to the other, then you are constantly an invitation, come to me, enter me, be with me.How can you be friendly? With the ego there is no possibility of friendship. Then friendship is just a mask. The real nature of life is that of the jungle: the big fish goes on eating the small fish. Even if you pretend to be friendly, that is just show, strategy, diplomacy. Nobody can be a friend here unless the ego disappears. Once the ego disappears the whole life has a quality of friendship, of love. Then you are friendly, simply friendly — and to everybody, because there is no problem. You are not trying to be the first, so you are not more a competitor. this is real dropping out.

Friendship is the purest love.It is the highest form of love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving. One gets much — but that is secondary, and that happens of its own accord.Friends never possess each other. The most fundamental thing in friendship is to give freedom to the other to be himself. There is a trust, there is no need to dominate the other; there is no need to chain him — through conditions — for tomorrow. Between two friends only one thing exists that bridges them, and that is trust; but it does not bind them.

Friendship has its own beauty, and if you can enjoy it, it is better than a love affair. A love affair is always jumpy. There are moments of happiness but they are few and far between. There are also many miserable moments. A friendship is a more solid thing; moves on. plainer ground. Friendship has a deeper equilibrium than love.

Friendship means that you have made somebody else more important than yourself; somebody else has become more precious than you yourself.

Friendship delivers what love promises but fails to provide. The contrast between the two are, in fact, many, and largely damning to love’s reputation. Where love is swift, for example, friendship is slow. Love comes quickly, as the song has it, but friendship ripens with time. If love is at its most perfect in its infancy, friendship is most treasured as the years go by.

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 OSHO says that :

There are three types of relationships in a man’s life. There are relationships of the intellect, which cannot be very deep. The relationship between a teacher and a student is this type of relationship. There are relationships of love, which are deeper than the intellect. The relationships between a mother and child, between brothers, between husband and wife are these types of relationships: they arise from the heart. Then there are even deeper relationships that arise from the navel. I call the relationships that arise from the navel ‘friendships’. They go deeper than love. Love can end: friendship never ends. Tomorrow we may hate the people we love today — but someone who is a friend can never become an enemy. If he becomes an enemy, then there was no friendship in the first place. The relationships of friendship are of the navel. They are relationships of deeper and unknown realms.

This is why the Buddha did not tell people to love each other. He talked about friendship. He said that there should be friends in your life. Somebody even asked the Buddha, “Why do you not call it love?” And he replied, “Friendship is a much deeper thing than love. Love can end, friendship never ends.”

Love binds, friendship gives freedom. Love can enslave somebody. It can possess, it can become a master. Friendship does not become someone’s master, it does not hold anyone back. It does not imprison, it frees. Love becomes a bondage because the lovers insist that the other should not love anyone else but them.

Friendship has no such insistence. One man can have thousands of friends, millions of friends, because friendship is a vast, very deep experience. It arises from the deepest centre of life. That is why friendship ultimately becomes the greatest way to take you towards the divine. Someone who is a friend to all will sooner or later reach to the divine because his relationships are happening with everyone’s navel centre. One day, he is bound to be connected to the navel centre of the universe.

One’s relationships in life should not be merely intellectual, they should not be only heartful — they should be deeper, they should be of the navel.